Zbornik radova Vizantolo{kog instituta Hß, 2003.

Recueil des travaux de l’Institut d’etudes byzantines Hß, 2003.

UDC: 930.1:929 Krituvul sa Imbrosa

DIETHER RODERICH REINSCH

KRITOBULOS OF IMBROS — LEARNED HISTORIAN,

OTTOMAN RAYA AND BYZANTINE PATRIOT
Kritobulos of Imbros, the author of a historical work covering the period from
1451 to 1467, describes the deeds of the Sultan Mehmed Fatih. The work, written be-
tween 1465 and 1467 is an autograph of the author. Apart from a knowledge of literature
(Thucydides), one can discern in this work a definite interest in medicine. K. was sul-
tan’s governor of Imbros for almost ten years. At the same time he was a patriot in the
sense that he expressed solidarity with the unfortunate inhabitants of Constantinople.

Kritobulos of Imbros, o Imbriwthj, as he calls himself in learned manner, is

known to us as the author of a historical work of some 200 printed pages covering
the period from 1451 to 1467. It describes the deeds of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed
Fatih, the Conqueror, in particular the war against the remnants of the Byzantine
Empire and the capture of the capital Constantinople on the 29th of May 1453. The
historical work has come down to us in a single manuscript which to this day re-
mains in Constantinople — Istanbul, in the library of the Topkapi Saray.
This manuscript, 160 pages of paper manufactured in Venice, was dated as
originating from the 16th century by its first publisher and by some other scholars
who had been studying it. In reality, however, it dates from the years 1465 to 1467
(as the paper’s watermarks prove) and is an autograph of the author. Proof of this
fact are the many corrections and sometimes substantial additions in the margins of
the text. The corrections and additions are such that they can only have been made
by the author himself. We also know the characteristics of Kritobulos’ handwriting
from a manuscript containing the historical works of Thucydides, which is in the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. There Kritobulos wrote on an endpaper a
well-known epigram in praise of Thucydides and above the epigram another contem-
porary writer (we now know that it is the handwriting of Georgios Amirutzes) wrote
the words “this is the writing of Kritobulos” (tou Kritoboulou grammata).
We do not know who would have read the history of Kritobulos and whether
anybody ever did before the middle of the 19th century. Up to this time there is no
copy, no translation into another language, nobody even mentions the work of
298 Diether Roderich Reinsch

Kritobulos. It seems to have been lying there throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th cen-
turies in its oriental cover which it kept until 1929 — when it was newly bound. It is
for this reason that Kritobulos remained unknown in the West and was not printed
anywhere. The slumber did not come to an end until August 1859 when the German
philologist and theologian Constantin Tischendorf stopped off in Constantinople on
the way home from the Sinai. He was on good terms with Alexander Lobanov, the
envoy of the Russian Tsar Alexander the Second, who for his part was very well
connected at the Court of the Sultan. And it was on account of Lobanov’s good of-
fices that Tischendorf had the chance to see the codex with the work of Kritobulos.
But not only that — Tischendorf was able to remove Kritobulos’ apparently unat-
tached accompanying letter dedicating his work to the conquering Sultan and take it
to Germany with him. All this Tischendorf himself reveals in the preface to a book
he published in 1860. He also published the said letter of dedication there — fortu-
nately for posterity, because the original which he brought with him from Constanti-
nople remains lost to this day.
A few years after Tischendorf’s re-discovery of Kritobulos the history was
printed twice — but published only once in an edition by Carl Muller for the
Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Paris 1870. The other printed edition was by
the polymath Philipp Anton Dethier from Kerpen in the Rhineland (today more fa-
mous for being the birthplace of Michael Schumacher than that of Dethier) and was
intended for inclusion in the Monumenta Hungariae Historica but not released by
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences because of the somewhat faster Parisian compe-
tition and also because a great number of serious mistakes had been identified in
Dethier’s edition. Kritobulos’ text was published in a second edition in 1963 in Bu-
charest by Vasile Grecu; Grecu, however, had neither a microfilm at his disposal nor
did he consult the codex unicus himself. A modern critical edition was finally pub-
lished in 1983 in Berlin as part of the series Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae.
The historical work of the Saray codex is however not Kritobulos’ only literary
legacy. We also have a prayer to Christ (handed down in 10 codices) and a poem of
18 Dodekasyllaboi in praise of Saint Augustine (handed down in 16 codices). A
homily on the Passion of Christ and a letter together with the codex containing them
were destroyed by the great fire in the Escorial in Madrid in 1671.
Kritobulos’ two surviving opuscula are of value to us for two reasons: Firstly,
the scribes of the two oldest codices containing these small works and the remaining
scripts handed down in these codices show us that Kritobulos belonged to a circle of
people around Georgios-Gennadios Scholarios, the first Greek-orthodox patriarch of
the Turkokratia, as well as the brothers Markos and Ioannes Eugenikos. Scholarios is
generally acknowledged to have strongly recommended the study of the Latin lan-
guage and the theological literature written in Latin to the orthodox theologians, and
he had devoted himself intensively to the writings of Latin theologians whose works
he translated. Thus Kritobulos’ verses on Saint Augustine fit exactly into the intel-
lectual climate of Gennadios’ circle. Secondly, we can infer Kritobulos’ actual name
from the codices containing his opuscula. In one of the two manuscripts still dating
from the 15th century we read in the titles Kritopoulou tou Imbriou and
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 299

Krhtopoulou Micahl tou Imbriou and in the other tou logiwtatou kurou
Miiahl tou Kritoboulou. The name Kritobulos and the birthplace Imbros connect
the author of the prayer and the verses on Sant Augustine with the author of the his-
torical work. There is no doubt whatsoever that both are one and the same person.
As for the version of the name Kritopouloj Nikolaos Andriotes held the view in an
essay he wrote as early as 1929 that this version Kritopouloj was the original form
which our historian — with a slight change — turned into the more Attic sounding
Kritobouloj. We encounter the family name Kritopouloj from the end of the 13th
century, whilst Kritobouloj is not Byzantine at all, but purely classical. (The name
appears in Herodotus, Plato and as learned paronym in a philosophical dialogue by
Nikephoros Gregoras.) Such a change of name was quite fashionable in Greek intel-
lectual circles of the time — think of Nikolaos Chalkokondyles, who became
Laonikos Chalkokondyles, or Georgios Gemistos who called himself Georgios
Plethon, and we know it was common practice in the West, too: Schwarzerd became
Melanchthon, Reuchlin became Kapnion and so on.
We do not know when Kritobulos was born. The political role he played in the
years from 1453 to 1466 presents him to us as a mature adult, but even in the year
1467/68 he was still thinking of starting on a further historical monograph: the his-
tory of the Ottomans. I think we cannot be much mistaken in assuming that
Kritobulos was born around 1400 to 1410. At the beginning of the first book of his
work he introduces himself as “Kritobulos, inhabitant of the island, first among the
people of Imbros” (Kritobouloj o nhsiwthj, ta prwta twn Imbriwtwn). This ex-
pression, together with the political role he played, shows us that his family must
have belonged to the leading notables of the island. In the autumn of 1444 the
learned merchant, historian and collector of manuscripts Ciriaco di Filippo de’
Pizzecolli from Ancona travelled around the Northern Aegean and visited amongst
others the island of Imbros. In his diary entry of 28th of September 1444 he says:
“Together with the learned noble Imbriot, the ’gift of Hermes’, Michael Kritobulos
we rode by land from the East coast of Imbros to the Western part of the island to the
town of Imbros itself ” (ad diem quartum Kalendas Octobres es orientali Imbri litore
una viro cum docto et Imbriote nobili Hermodoro Michaele Critobulo ad
occidentalem eiusdem insulae partem ad Imbron … terrestri itinere equis devecti …
venimus). The “hermodoro” must not confuse us; it is not an additional name of Mi-
chael Kritobulos. The learned Ciriaco just wanted to express that to him Kritobulos
was “the gift of Hermes” — a lucky encounter. In a letter which Ciriaco sent to his
friend Scholarios on the next day, 29th September 1444, the name of Michael
Critobulos appears without the embellishing epithet: una tuo cum amicissimo viro et
Imbriotum doctissimo, Michaele Critobulo. The friendship between Scholarios and
Kritobulos referred to here probably stems from the years spent studying together in
Constantinople. In his historical work Kritobulos mentions Scholarios, calls him “a
very wise and admirable man” (andra sofon panu kai qaumaston) and relates that
the Conqueror Sultan valued his wisdom, intelligence and his moral character; he
himself praises his friend on this occasion once more for his intellectual power and
his charm.
300 Diether Roderich Reinsch

We have no concrete information about the studies of Kritobulos, but they

must have been both extensive and intensive. Apart from a knowledge of literature,
which is very obvious in his work and to which I shall refer again later, we can dis-
cern a definite interest in medicine: where in his work Kritobulos describes the
plague, which visited Constantinople in the year 1467, his account is full of medical
terminology which he could neither have found in Thucydides nor in the works of
any other historian, for example, cerebral ventricles, pia mater, meninges, a fit of
lethargy, meningitis, inflammation of the blood, accelerated pulse, numbness of the
extremities (koiliai tou egkefalou, umenej, mhniggej, katafora, frenitij,
exopthsij tou aimatoj, palmoi, nrwsij). Another example of our author’s particu-
lar propensity towards medicine is the special praise which Kritobulos reserves for
the emperor’s personal physician, the Jewish doctor Jakup of Gaeta.
Kritobulos began to write down his historical work in the summer of 1453 at
the latest. We can deduce this from a passage in the middle of his first book. There
Kritobulos mentions the names of Ottoman commanders who took part in the siege
of Constantinople and the sections of the walls which the Sultan had assigned to
them for their operations. There we read amongst other things: “To Ishak, the then
Commander-in-Chief of Asia and to Mahmut, Vizier at the time, he assigned the sec-
tion from the Myriandron Gate (Mevlevihane Kap›s›) to the Golden Gate”. Ishak
was Commander-in-Chief of Asia (beylerbeyi) until the summer of 1453. The fact
that Kritobulos writes “the then Commander-in-Chief of Asia” means that
Kritobulos wrote these words when Ishak no longer held this position, i.e. after the
summer of 1453. Mahmut, on the other hand, was only Vizier up until the summer of
1453 after which he became Grand Vizier, but the words “at the time” have been
added later in the margins of the manuscript. This means that the text was written
without the addition in the summer of 1453, when Mahmut was still only Vizier.
Later, however, when Kritobulos revised the text again, Mahmut had risen to the po-
sition of Grand Vizier. The revision took place after the autumn of 1466 as we can
infer from reliable evidence and since Mahmut had already been Grand Vizier for 13
years, he could, of course, not be referred to as plain komhj, Vizier, of the Sultan
and Kritobulos added the explanatory sentence in the margins.
At that time, in the summer of 1453, as the last act in the drama of the
Byzantine Empire’s demise unfolds, Kritobulos also enters the political stage. The
only source for the events in which Kritobulos was personally involved is his own
work. The capture of Constantinople caused panic among the Northern Aegean is-
lands which were still Byzantine territory (Imbros, Lemnos and Thasos). The people
and those in charge (the arcontej) feared an attack by the Ottoman fleet on its re-
turn to the Gallipoli base on the Hellespont. More than 200 families had already fled
from Lemnos in a hurry. Kritobulos describes how he took the initiative in this situa-
tion, sent a delegation to the Ottoman admiral Hamza and one to the Sultan himself
and thus ensured that the islands were not put under siege but left as feuda to the no-
ble Genoese family of Gattilusi: the Lesbos branch of the Gattilusi was given
Lemnos and Thasos, the Ainos branch (in Enez on the Maritsa delta) Imbros.
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 301

When later, in the winter of 1465/66, the Sultan confiscated these fiefdoms, he
sent his admiral Yunus-bey to Imbros with the order to take over the island from the
Gattilusi’s officials. Yunus comes to the island, negotiates with our Kritobulos and
makes him governor. He still holds this position in 1457 when, in the summer of this
year, one of the Pope’s fleets appears in the Aegean, takes over Lemnos, Thasos and
Samothrake from the Ottomans and makes clear its intention to take over Imbros as
well. Kritobulos, however, makes such clever diplomatic moves that Imbros is left in
peace. And not only that. In the year 1458/59 he menages to snatch Lemnos back
from the Italians. He personally goes to the Sultan in Adrianople (Edirne) and at the
same time writes to Demetrios Palaiologos, the brother of the last Byzantine em-
peror, who, as Ottoman vassal, had parts of the Peloponnes under his command, sug-
gesting that he should ask the Sultan for Imbros and Lemnos as well. The Sultan
agrees and Kritobulos, at the head of a cavalry unit, takes over the island’s fortresses
without a drop of blood being spilt. He remains governor of Imbros, but now on be-
half of Demetrios Palaiologos.
We know very little else of his life. He leaves Imbros probably in the summer
of 1466 when the Venetians take over the island. During the great plague of the sum-
mer of 1467 he was most probably in Constantinople and witnessed the epidemic
there. He dedicated the first and substantial part of his historical work to the Sultan
in the autumn of 1466, and a revised and extended final version in the autumn of
1467/68. From the autumn of 1468 we have a letter which Georgios Amirutzes wrote
to Kritobulos concerning two literary works by Theophanes of Medeia (secular
name: Theodoros Agallianos). Kritobulos thought very highly of Georgios
Amirutzes, who was a well respected scholar of his time with the epithet “the philos-
opher”. He informs us that, at the request of the Sultan, Amirutzes integrated all
maps which were part of the work of Ptolemy, the geographer of the ancient world,
into one large map, and that together with his son he translated the complete works
of Ptolemy from the Greek into Arabic. Both manuscripts, that of the Greek original
and that of the Arabic translation, are still in Istanbul today. Amirutzes and
Agallianos, incidentally, were part of the circle around Scholarios and the brothers
Eugenikos.
After that we do not hear anything else from Kritobulos. In the proem to his
history he had announced that he would write another work on the rise of the Otto-
mans. However, it was not Kritobulos who wrote this book, but Laonikos
Chalkokondyles, who, incidentally, seemed to have known Kritobulos’ work; it
looks as though he borrowed certain phrases from it.
The legends which keep coming up in bibliography, in particular in hand-
books, that Kritobulos was the Sultan’s secretary and that at the end of his life he
had become a monk on Mount Athos, are pure fantasy and there are no clues to this,
whatsoever, in any of the sources.
What did Kritobulos write about in his history? After the proem in which he
deals with the usual literary topics of the genre (assuring the reader of accuracy and
truthfulness) borrowing from Thucydides and Herodotus, he begins his narrative
302 Diether Roderich Reinsch

with the death of Murat the Second. According to Kritobulos, his son and successor
Mehmed saw himself right from the start as a second Alexander with the objective
of world domination. The first step in that direction was to capture Constantinople.
Kritobulos proceeds to describe in great detail the building of the fortress Rumeli
Hisari and the Sultan’s palace in Adrianople. The rest of the first book which makes
up a third of the work deals exclusively with the capture of Constantinople and
well-known key events: The casting of the great cannons, transporting the Turkish
ships overland from the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn, the wounding of Giustiniani,
the death of the Emperor Constantine and so on. No other historian of the Halosis
has ever described it in more vivid colours and in greater detail. It is for this reason
that Edmond Pears in his classic book “The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the
Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turcs”, London 1903, used Kritobulos
as the main source for his narrative and not Dukas, for whom many have such a high
regard, most probably because Dukas’ work contains edifying legends (such as the
death of Lukas Notaras), and because he employs such wonderfully derogatory
names for the conquering Sultan. Pears says of Kritobulos: “His Life of Mahomet is
by far the most valuable of the recently discovered documents, and, as will be seen, I
have made use of it as the nucleus of my narrative of the siege”.
The other important events in Kritobulos’ account are the various campaigns of
the Sultan in the Balkans (Serbia, Albania, Bosnia), on the Peloponnes, in Trebizond
and the Aegean Islands. But time and again Constantinople, too, is the scene of events,
since the Sultan established his new capital there by rebuilding and repopulating the
city. To become the capital of the Ottoman Empire the city needed to be repopulated,
the economy stimulated, a new residence and new administrative buildings built. This
was an important topic for Kritobulos, as the central idea of his work was the transi-
tion of power (translatio imperii) from the Byzantine Greeks to the Ottoman Turks.
The work ends with the five year war against Venice and the Sultan’s second Albania
campaign and in between the detailed description of the plague of 1467.
For his narrative Kritobulos, following Byzantine literary convention, used the
only suitable linguistic register of the Greek language for such an undertaking, i.e.
the so-called “Atticistic Greek”, the written language which had mainly developed
in the first post-Christian centuries during the so-called Second Sophistic. Like all
learned Byzantines Kritobulos had to learn this language, studying it intensively for
a long time, and he learnt it well. Any deviation from the general canon in his text
does not go beyond the scope of the best works of Byzantine historiography.
Datives like gunV instead of gunaiki or nuktaij instead of nuxi are rare ex-
amples of the influence of a lower register, but they are examples of datives as well,
datives which were hardly ever used anymore in the spoken language. Contemporary
hellenized Turkish names ending in -hj are also very often declined in the traditional
way according to the rules of the Ionian dialect, for example Macoumouthj,
Macoumoutew, Macoumoutei. The syntax is the classical one with participles, in-
finitives etc., the vocabulary is conservative-archaistic. New loan words from the
Byzantine era are rare. We note amhrissa, genhtzaproj, doux, kaisar, komhj,
maistroj, pasiaj, fragellion; an archaism of his own creation is the word
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 303

toufax in the sense of “gun” from the Turkish tufek (which became the Greek
toufeki) and toufakoforoj (the gun carrying soldier). As a rule, Kritobulos’ style
is straight forward and generally stays within what the ancients called the mesoj
carakthr. Some paragraphs, however, required a higher register in the author’s
opinion: they are the letter of dedication to the Sultan, the proem, the Sultan’s cam-
paign speeches before the capture, the description (Ekphrasis) of the construction
and action of the Great Cannon, the threnody about the capture, some battle scenes
and the description of the plague. Like Ioannes Kantakuzenos before him and his
contemporary Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Kritobulos uses stylized phrases, even
complete scenes, to describe less important military events.
The language and style of Kritobulos have been judged very differently in
modern research. The first editor, Carl Muller, places him above his contemporary
colleagues Sphrantzes, Dukas and Chalkokondyles. Karl Krumbacher (influenced by
the intellectual world of Philhellenism and lover of “vernacular poetry”) condemns
his “garrulousness” and “limited vocabulary”, whilst Nikolaos Tomadakes in his
book Peri alwsewj thj Kwnstantinoupolewj, Athens, 1953, second edition
1969, makes the following comment: “Tradition demanded the use of the ancient
language, which Kritobulos seemed to have mastered extremely well and did not use
like a pupil at all, but with great inner emotion and mental strength”.
A generally good usage of the atticistic literary language, however, is only the
foundation. Based on this Kritobulos masters the fine art of literary imitatio to an as-
tonishing degree, an art which educated Byzantines pursued with passion and
dedication. Perhaps we understand this phenomenon better today than people in
earlier epochs, who were more concerned with originality and did not yet know the
concept of intertextuality.
Every reader of Kritobulos immediately notices that one of the sources of in-
spiration for mimesis is Thucydides, both in respect of the language and the general
structure of the work. Like Thucydides, Kritobulos divides his account into calendar
years and within the years into the four seasons. After the example of Thucydides
the big speeches which the author attributes to the Sultan, contain on the one hand
elements which serve to analyse the political and military situation, and on the other
hand inform the reader of the motives guiding the orator. Apart from many expres-
sions and phrases which Kritobulos uses to give his account a generally
Thucydidean flavour there are paragraphs in which he uses complete scenes from the
works of Thucydides to serve a special purpose in his text.
Thus, the Sultan’s big campaign speech to his generals and officers, for example
(which covers 9 printed pages in that edition) contains at the start text borrowed
from two speeches by Pericles (from the so-called Epithaphios and from his defense
speech, the Apology). And later, when the Conqueror praises the courage of his an-
cestors who, with incredible strength, had overrun the whole of Asia Minor and great
parts of Europe, he uses — freely adapted, of course — the words with which the Co-
rinthian envoys had characterized the courageous and steadfast Athenians before the
Assembly of the Peloponnesian League. A highly suitable choice!
304 Diether Roderich Reinsch

The Sultan delivers a second speech in the military camp outside Constantinople
to his commanders and his Life-guard. Here, as well as using the speech by Alex-
ander the Great before the battle of Gaugamela in Arrian’s Anabasis, Kritobulos also
goes back to two campaign speeches in Thucydides, that of the Athenian admiral
Phormion before the naval battle of Naupaktos, giving his soldiers instructions, and
Brasidas’ speech before Amphipolis in which he, too, wants to encourage his soldiers
and assures them that he himself would fight side by side with them. There Brasidas
turns directly to his sub-commander Klearidas and it is precisely these words
Kritobulos alludes to when he makes the Conqueror turn directly to his Viziers Halil
and Sarudscha. The whole structure of Brasidas’ speech can be found in Kritobulos’
text. Thus Kritobulos draws not only on the great and successful Athenian Admiral
Phormion and the outstanding Spartan General Brasidas, but also on Alexander the
Great himself in the account of Arrian, in order to convey Mehmed’s abilities as a
soldier and strategist. There is a further passage where Kritobulos quotes the words
of the bold Spartan. At the height of the battle of Constantinople, when Giustiniani
was wounded and his companions carried him away and left the breach in the wall
by the Romanos Gate without any defense, the Sultan — in Kritobulos’ account —
notices this and calls out: “We have it, friends, we have the city. The men are run-
ning away from us. They can no longer withstand. The wall is divested of its defend-
ers” (ecomen, w filoi, thn polin, ecomen hdh. feugousin oi andrej hmaj. ouketi
paramenein anecontai. gumnon twn promacomenwn to teicoj).
Brasidas’ conduct and words at Amphipolis provide the model for the account
of the complete scene. When the Athenian commander Kleon had to withdraw par-
tially his soldiers, Brasidas grasps the situation in a flash, i.e. that Kleon had to show
his enemies his weak side (ta gumna proj touj polemiouj douj) and he calls: oi
andrej hmaj ou menousin. Note the word for word quotations, albeit in a com-
pletely new context.
The famous account of the siege of Plataa by the Spartans under the leadership
of Archidamas was the object of imitatio for many Byzantine historiographers, and
Kritobulos too has used it to serve his purposes. But unlike his colleagues he uses
the subject matter of the original in two completely different contexts. Kritobulos
uses Archidamos’ failed attempt to set fire to the castle of Plataa to describe the suc-
cessful capture of the castellum on the island of Prinkipos by the Turkish admiral
Baltoglu, whilst he employs the strategems of the defenders of Plataa in order to de-
pict the fighting for the walls of Constantinople. He chooses his material with great
mastery and adapts the quotations to the new circumstances, even to techniques of
contemporary warfare.
In the fifth and last book of his work, where he describes the great plague,
Kritobulos like others before him (i.e. Prokopios and Ioannes Kantakuzenos) refers
back to the description of the epidemic which Thucydides gave in the second book
of his Peloponnesian War. Apart from some very obvious quotations, however,
Kritobulos’ account (unlike Thucydides he is definitely describing the bubonic
plague) is completely independent from this model.
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 305

In general, Kritobulos’ language is strongly coloured by Thucydides, in particu-

lar as regards the military sector. It is wrong, however, to call Kritobulos a “slavish
imitator” of Thucydides — as has repeatedly happened in former research; his
imitatio is anything but slavish. I totally agree with the opinion of Nikolaos
Andriotes who defended his compatriot against such reproaches with the following
words: “His admirable knowledge of the ancient world and his highly developed lin-
guistic sensibility have kept him from betraying his model, and his undoubted lite-
rary talent has enabled him to create passages which here and there can be regarded
as entirely equal to the great model.”
The learned game of imitatio does not, however, end here. Apart from
Thucydides, Kritobulos in his proem goes back to Herodotus (which was traditional
practice); in addition he borrows from Herodotus another two small geographical ex-
cursions, i.e. when he describes the course of the Danube and when he describes the
course of the Euros. The Turkish names in hellenised form as for example
Mecemethj, Macoumouthj etc. he declines as the hellenised Persian names are de-
clined in Herodotus (Xerxhj, Xerxew — Farnakhj, Farnakew etc.).
Where, finally, Kritobulos describes the sufferings of his people, he draws a
comparison between his attitude as Roman-Byzantine towards the Ottomans and that
of Flavius Josephus as a Jew towards the ancient Romans by quoting the words of
Josephus. That, too, was well chosen, for Josephus and Kritobulos were indeed in
very similar situations. In both cases an overpowering conqueror had defeated the
author’s own people and their capital. Both authors recognise the superiority of the
victor and his right, too, based on inevitable historical evolution, and both describe
events which end with the subjugation of their own people.
Thus the German philologist Heinrich Lieberich, who had no liking for
Kritobulos’ attitude, wrote in the year 1900 (when the German Empire had only re-
cently been founded and the “wars of liberation” against French rule were still
alive in the historical memory): “One cannot but help admiring the literary know-
ledge of the Greek who always seemed to find the most suitable proem for his
purposes”.
The deepest traces in the work of Kritobulos, however, were not left by
Thucydides, but by Arrianos with his work Anabasis Alexandri. Here, too, the choice
of model is made with a very specific purpose in mind. With this clever literary
move Kritobulos equates the Conqueror with Alexander the Great. He did so, too,
expressis verbis in his letter of dedication, where he describes Mehmed’s deeds as
“in no way less important than those of Alexander the Great”. This comparison was
not Kritobulos’ invention. On the contrary, the Sultan saw himself thus. He knew
Alexander, of course, from Arabic and Persian poetry and also from the Turkish
Iskendername of the Ottoman poet Ahmed. The comparison was therefore not alto-
gether mistaken. Mehmed, at 19 absolute ruler of a great empire in the Eastern Med-
iterranean, which was ever more expanding, had now at 22 conquered the more than
a thousand year old empress of all cities and had thus become the successor to the
Byzantine emperor with all the rights and titles that entailed. The comparison with
306 Diether Roderich Reinsch

Alexander the Great was not at all unreasonable. I have to pass over the details but I
can assure you: Kritobulos’ text is completely imbued with the imitatio of Arrianos.
I hope it has become clear from the little I have been able to present here, that
Kritobulos was extremely well-read and that he was a great master in using this
knowledge of literature to embellish the text of his historical work, and by means of
subtexts to extend the dimensions of the meaning under and behind the surface.

For Kritobulos the Sultan was the natural successor to the Byzantine Emperor,
natural according to the laws of history as had been worked out by the theoreticians
of the Hellenistic time. According to this theory world history consisted of a succes-
sion of great empires and ruling peoples. In the beginning it was the Assyr-
ian-Babylonians, followed by the Egyptians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks and
Romans, and now — according to Kritobulos — it was the turn of the Ottoman Turks.
This theoretical approach was not Kritobulos’ invention, but was a notion widely
held in intellectual circles of the time. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, for example, the fu-
ture Pope Pius ÇÇ, writes the following: Omnium rerum vicissitudo est, nulla potentia
perpetuo manet. Fuerunt Itali rerum domini, nunc Turchorum inchoatur imperium. It
also serves to explain why Kritobulos did not use the Arabic-Turkish title “Emir” or
“Sultan” for the Conqueror, but calls him “Emperor” (basileuj or rather megaj
basileuj) i.e. uses the traditional title of the Byzantine emperor, once even “King
of Kings” (basileuj basilewn), referring to the old Persian title of “Shahinshah” —
this again is in accordance with the notion of the time identifying the contemporary
Ottoman Turks with the ancient Persians (or the Trojans, even). Kritobulos regarded
himself as a subject of the Sultan, just as before he had been a subject of the
Byzantine Emperor. At the beginning of his letter of dedication to the Sultan he calls
himself the Sultan’s “humble slave” (douloj eutelhj) and “Your slave of slaves”
(douloj twn doulwn twn swn), very much in accordance with Ottoman etiquette —
for German professors at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, a sign of
abysmal personal servility and outright treasonable sycophancy. Kritobulos was a
raya in the technical sense of the word. Many researchers from the nineteenth and
the first half of the twentieth century, however, saw in him a traitor to the national
cause and a raya in the offensive sense of the word, because they themselves were
limited by their ideological horizons and overlooked the fact that the notion of eqnoj
(nation) had a different meaning in the fifteenth century than after the eighteenth
century.
Other scholars, in particular the Marxists, saw Kritobulos as a betrayer of the
people, guided by class interest alone. This idea may be justified when applied to
those Byzantine nobles and higher clerics, who collaborated with the conquerors and
entered into the Sultan’s service (such as Georgios Amirutzes, Theophanes of
Medeia, Georgios Scholarios, Demetrios Palaiologos, Lukas Notaras and others) and
who were indeed keen to keep their previously enjoyed privileges alive under the
new ruler. Whether they managed to do so in the end is another matter. One has to
consider, though, what alternative solutions there would have been for the people of
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 307

the Aegean islands. They could have tried to place themselves under the protection
of Venice or the Pope, but in view of their geographical position and the strong Otto-
man fleet cruising the Aegean, this protection would have been anything but safe.
Furthermore, the Roman tax system was harsher than that of the Ottomans and the
scope for religious tolerance was considerably greater under Ottoman than under Ro-
man rule, as the experience of 1204 and the conditions in the Venetian colonies
would have shown them. The people, in any case, did not want the Romans. In the
work of Dukas we read of the rebellion of the Lemnians against Niccolo Gattilusio
with the intention of handing over the island to the Ottomans, and we learn from
Kritobulos that people of Lemnos had collected a thousand ducats in order to get the
occupying forces of Palaiokastron to leave and to hand over the island to the Turks.
Kritobulos himself, with his clever political skills, saved the people of Imbros from
the dangers of foolish heroism.
Kritobulos was a raya of the Sultan, but at the same time he was a patriot in
the sense that he expressed solidarity with the unfortunate inhabitants of Constanti-
nople and the victims of the war. Although he praises his hero, the Sultan, he does
not hide his sympathy for the sufferings of the common people, nor his admiration
for the brave and tragic death of the last Byzantine emperor. In reading the text we
must not, of course, forget its general tendency to exaggerate the protagonist’s mer-
its and to minimize his faults. It is wrong, however, to do what some modern critics
of Kritobulos have done, i.e. to maintain that his slavish attitude was apparent in ev-
erything he did and that he was a completely uncritical sycophant and flatterer of
Mehmed. It is not true that Kritobulos would have concealed anything which could
have cast a shadow on the conduct of his hero Mehmed. He does not, for example,
gloss over the Conqueror’s extreme cruelty, when the unfortunate defenders of the
Fortress of Therapion (Tarabya) were impaled, nor similar events which could easily
have been left out. The description of the sacking of Constantinople, the lament
about the fall of the city, the obituary for the emperor Constantine and the obituary
for Lukas Notaras do not support such one-sided negative criticism. Nevertheless,
Kritobulos himself was aware of the contradiction that, on the one hand, he glorified
the Sultan but, on the other hand, was part of the suppressed genos. “Genos”, not
“ethnos”, is the word which he also uses for the Turks and others, and it is with his
“genos” he identifies explicitly at the beginning of his work, when he speaks of “our
genos” and “us” and “our misfortune”. The word genoj has a wide meaning cover-
ing “family” as well as “clan” and even “religious community”. Throughout a whole
chapter entitled “Apology”, Kritobulos asks his readers to understand that he is deal-
ing with the misfortune of his own people, and he defends his genoj which had not
been able to escape from the iron laws of history. “In no way”, he says, “is it the
fault of the genoj, perhaps those at the top could possibly be blamed for bad leader-
ship. They alone may be held responsible, but the genos must not be blamed” (ouk
esti touto tou genouj amarthma, alla twn kakwj te kai wj ouk edei
crhsamenwn toij pragmasin. ouj kai dikaion monouj euqunein, alla mh tou
genouj kathgorein).
308 Diether Roderich Reinsch

As a politician Kritobulos was not a “man of blood”, but a man of conciliation

and, as the Byzantines called it, of oikonomia, i.e. prepared to abandon high princi-
ples in favour of political compromise. He used diplomatic cunning to solve the cri-
sis in Imbros, when the Pope’s fleet suddenly appeared; he prepared the handing
over of Lemnos carefully and cautiously so that the fortresses’ commander would
open the gates without blood being split. When the young commander of the fortress
of Palaiokastron refused to hand over the castle, he made this clear to Kritobulos
with an arrogant gesture, which Kritobulos comments on ironically. The young man
sent him a piece of paper on which there were no words but just a sword painted in
blood. But when Kritobulos appeared in front of the castle with 400 men on horse-
back and 300 foot soldiers, the young man’s bravado, according to Kritobulos’ ac-
count, disappeared rapidly.
Our historian’s conduct is consistent with his general attitude towards war.
When describing the Ottoman war council, he analyses (with quotations from
Thucydides and Flavius Josephus) the motives of the participants. Those in favour of
the war were, according to him, driven by ambition, thirst for glory and the pursuit
of profit, or by a desire to ingratiate themselves with the Sultan, or simply because
they did not know what war meant. Kritobulos describes a bloody battle with words
which show abhorrence rather than enthusiasm: “drunken from the battle …, almost
forgetting their human nature …, they were like Furies”. The inhabitants of the for-
tresses on the Peloponnes who did not surrender to the Sultan and paid a heavy price
for this, he reproaches for being irresponsible.
Kritobulos showed no heroism, but he was a patriot nevertheless, both in the
narrower sense of the word, by looking after his compatriots on Imbros and in the
wider sense by showing sympathy for his genoj and for his emperor. For Kritobulos
the transition from the Byzantine Emperor to the Ottoman Sultan did not mean the
opening up of an abyss of enmity, neither did it mean building a bridge of friendship
and mutual understanding between Ottomans and Byzantines, between Turks and
Greeks. To this day, a permanent bridge of understanding remains unbuilt.

Diter Roderik Rajn{

KRITOVUL SA IMBROSA: U^ENI ISTORI^AR, OSMANSKI
RAJETIN I VIZANTIJSKI RODOQUB
Istorijsko delo Kritovula sa Imbrosa, koje je posve}eno poduhvatima
sultana-osvaja~a Mehmeda Fatiha u vremenu izme|u 1451. i 1467. godine, na-
stalo je kao pi{~ev autograf 1465–1467. i sa~uvano u tom obliku: Istanbul, co-
dex Seragliensis 6. Ovaj kodeks otkrio je u biblioteci Saraja 1859. godine Kon-
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 309

stantin Ti{endorf (Tischendorf) koji je iz wega izvadio i odneo u Nema~ku je-

dan prepis Kritovulovog pisma posve}enog sultanu i publikovao ga 1860. go-
dine. ^itavo delo prvi put je 1870. izdao Karl Miler (Müller) u Fragmenta Hi-
storicorum Graecorum, dok se izdawe koje je za Monumenta Hungariae Historica
bio pripremio Filip Anton Detir (Dethier) nije pojavilo. Moderno kriti~ko
izdawe pojavilo se 1983. u Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae (CFHB), series
Berolinensis.
Od Kritovula su sa~uvani, osim istorijskog dela, jo{ jedna molitva i
jedna pesma posve}ena Avgustinu. Oni nam pokazuju pripadnost Kritovula (sa
svetovnim imenom Mihailo Kritopul) krugu intelektualaca oko Georgija Sho-
larija, Georgija Amiruca i bra}e Marka i Jovana Evgenika.
Kritovul je bio ro|en otprilike 1400–1410. na Imbrosu; wegova porodi-
ca pripadala je uglednicima na ostrvu. ]iriako di Filipo de Picekoli, koji
je u jesen 1444. posetio Imbros, govori o wemu u svom dnevniku kao o œvir
doctusŒ, œImbriotes nobilisŒ, i u jednom pismu Sholariju kao o œImbriotum
doctissimusŒ. Wegove kwi`evne studije (verovatno u Carigradu), sude}i po we-
govom delu, morale su biti {iroke i intenzivne, ali on pokazuje i produbqena
znawa u oblasti medicine.
Rad na svojoj istoriji zapo~eo je Kritovul najkasnije u leto 1453; gotovo
delo (do swige IV, glava 8) posvetio je u jesen 1466. sultanu Mehmedu, zajedno
sa u Istanbulu nastalom verzijom posvetnog pisma, a zatim je delo u prera|e-
nom i dopuwenom obliku jo{ jednom i kona~no, zajedno sa verzijom posvetnog
pisma koju je publikovao Ti{endorf, predao sultanu u jesen 1467. godine.
Postoji jedno pismo Georgija Amiruca iz 1468, upu}eno Kritovulu, a za-
tim se o wemu vi{e ni{ta ne ~uje. Ra{irene tvrdwe u priru~nicima da je bio
sultanov sekretar i, kona~no, monah u jednom atonskom manastiru nemaju nika-
kvu izvornu podlogu.
Kritovul u svom delu predstavqa dela Mehmedova od wegovog dolaska na
presto po smrti Murata II. Skoro ~itava prva kwiga opisuje pripreme za opsa-
du i samu opsadu Carigrada sa poznatim kqu~nim doga|ajima: izgradwa tvr|ave
Rumeli Hisar, livewe velikog topa, preno{ewe brodova u Zlatni rog, rawava-
we \ustinijanija, smrt cara Konstantina, pqa~kawe grada. Ostale kwige tre-
tiraju razne sultanove pohode po Balkanu (Srbija, Albanija, Bosna, Pelopo-
nez), na Trapezunt i u Egeju, izbijawe epidemije kuge u Carigradu i rat protiv
Venecije. Kritovul neprekidno opisuje i razne graditeqske pothvate Mehme-
dove u Carigradu i nastojawa da se grad ponovo naseli, da bi mogao da preuzme
ulogu prestonice carstva pod novim gospodarima.
Za uobli~avawe dela Kritovul upotrebqava jezi~ki i stilisti~ki regi-
star aticizma. Pozajmice su vrlo retke, re~nik je u celini uzev konzervativ-
no-arhai~an. Izvesni odseci dela su retorski naro~ito stilizovani: posvetno
pismo, uvod, govori sultana kao vojskovo|e, utisak o livewu topa, oplakivawe
osvajawa Carigrada, pojedine scene bitaka i opis kuge.
310 Diether Roderich Reinsch

Naro~ito rafinirana je igra literarnog mimisisa (podra`avawa anti-

ci), koju Kritovul vrlo svesno i sa ciqem sprovodi. Jedan od wegovih izvora
inspiracije je Tukidid; nezavisno od op{te koncepcije (podela po godi{wim
dobima, govori protagonista, op{ti kolorit jezika), Kritovul koristi odre|e-
ne scene kod Tukidida da bi svom kazivawu dao drugu smisaonu dimenziju (npr.
Periklovi govori, govor poslanika Korinta pred skup{tinom Peloponeskog
saveza, govori vojskovo|a Formiona i Braside). Pri tome je podtekst uvek tako
postavqen da se poja~ava zna~aj; ~esto izra`eni pejorativni sud da je Kritovul
œropski podra`avalacŒ Tukidida pokazuje se kao pogre{an. Ali Tukidid je sa-
mo jedan deo ove literarne igre. Herodot je tako|e kumovao u pojedinim odlom-
cima i, uop{te uzev, kod deklinacije turskih imena (Turci kao naslednici
Persijanaca). Za predstavqawe sopstvene uloge u odnosu prema svom narodu,
sada ve} pot~iwenom Osmanlijama, Kritovul se oslawa na Josifa Flavija. To
je vrlo dobar izbor, jer su se oba autora nalazila u me|usobno uporedivim si-
tuacijama — Josif kao Jevrejin prema Rimqanima koji su zauzeli Jerusalim,
Kritovul kao gr~ki Vizantinac prema Osmanlijama koji su zauzeli Konstanti-
nopoq. Obojica su se priklonili istorijskoj nu`nosti i preno{ewu vlasti na
osvaja~a. Ali najdubqe srodstvo sa jednim kwi`evnim uzorom pojavquje se u
vezi sa Arijanovom Anabasis Alexandri. Ovde se ciq sastoji u tome da se kroz
imitaciju Arijana dimenzija Aleksandra Velikog prida Mehmedu; jedna sa-
svim obja{wiva ideja koju je sam Mehmed sasvim prihvatao, jer je sa carskim
prestolom u Carigradu preuzeo i te`wu za ekumenskom imperijom.
Mehmed je za Kritovula bio prirodni naslednik vizantijskih careva, bu-
du}i da je tok istorije prema helenisti~kom modelu, na koji se Kritovul osla-
wa, bio sa~iwen od niza velikih carstava (od asirsko-vavilonskog, preko per-
sijskog do rimsko-vizantijskog), u kome sada upravo nastupa osmanski trenu-
tak. Ova ideja je predstavqala op{te uverewe me|u intelektualcima wegovog
vremena. Kritovul stoga dosledno upotrebqava za sultana titulu vizantijskog
cara (vasilevs ili veliki vasilevs) i samo jednom mu pridaje staropersijsku
titulu {ahin{ah. Sebe smatra nemuslimanskim podanikom sultana (rajetin),
kao {to je ranije bio podanik vizantijskog cara. Zbog toga je Kritovul sa ideo-
lo{kog horizonta XIX i prve polovine XX veka bio smatran izdajnikom svoje
otaxbine. Marksisti~ki istra`iva~i su ga pre svega tretirali kao izdajnika
svog naroda. U tome ima utoliko ta~nosti {to je Kritovul, kao i drugi ugled-
ni Vizantinci, laici ili klirici (kao npr. Georgije Amiruc, Teofan iz Me-
dije, Georgije Sholarije, Dimitrije Paleolog, Luka Notaras), bio zaintereso-
van i poku{avao da sa~uva svoj privilegovan polo`aj i pod turskim sultanom.
Ali ni u kom slu~aju ne mo`e se re}i da je on izdao svoj narod i ostavio ga na
cedilu.
Na ovom mestu zgodno je preispitati, kao karakteristi~an primer, kakve
su alternative stajale pred stanovni{tvom Lemnosa. Pred sna`nom osmanskom
flotom u Egeju nije se mogla o~ekivati nikakva sigurna za{tita Venecije ili
pape. Ali pre svega su podno{qiv poreski sistem i tada{wa verska toleran-
cija Osmanlija govorili u wihovu korist, a protiv Latina. Lemnoski puk nije
 Kritobulos of Imbros — learned historian, Ottoman raya and Byzantine patriot 311

`eleo Latine i pre je `eleo da ostrvo preda Osmanlijama. U odgovaraju}im di-

plomatskim pregovorima sa Osmanlijama i Latinima, Kritovul je, kao guver-
ner Imbrosa, ne samo za{titio svoje ostrvo od nasilnog osvajawa, nego je i
Lemnos uzeo Latinima bez prolivawa krvi.
Kritovul je tako|e i rodoqub u formulisawu svoje solidarnosti sa pat-
wama stanovnika Carigarada i `rtvama rata. On dodu{e slavi sultana kao svog
heroja, ali istovremeno nalazi tople re~i za hrabru i tragi~nu smrt posled-
weg vizantijskog cara. Bio je sam svestan svoje unutra{we podvojenosti na tim
osnovama i tu je okolnost dovoqno jasno iskazao u jednom apologetskom pogla-
vqu, u kome se na prikladan na~in vra}a Josifu Flaviju.
Kao politi~ar Kritovul nije bio œ~ovek krviŒ. Oslawao se na diplomat-
ska sredstva i sa finom ironijom opisuje pseudo-herojstvo jednog mladog ko-
mandanta tvr|ave na Lemnosu. Za ratni~ko odu{evqewe nije imao razumevawa.
Kao motive za agresivnost me|u osmanskim oficirima Kritovul vidi ambici-
ju, slavohlepqe, materijalni interes, ulizi{tvo prema sultanu i ignoranciju
prema stvarnom licu rata. Ratnici za vreme bitke pokazuju mu se kao furije
koje zaboravqaju svoju qudsku prirodu. Kritovul nije bio ni heroj ni mu~e-
nik, nego patriota koji je delovao u neposrednom `ivotnom interesu svojih ze-
mqaka.